A new Steam Gamepad AND a new Deck beta feature!!
We've had some HUGE news in the world of Steam—including a new officially licensed Steam controller and a surprise beta release of the new Game Recording mode in Steam! We'll deep dive all of it and more, today! Let's get right into the news!
So this is interesting: have you guys heard of Hori? They're a Japanese gaming accessory manufacturer. They've got an excellent reputation when it comes to third party gamepads and their website recently listed a new Steam gamepad.
This looks like it could be the best Steam Deck gamepad as it has almost complete feature parity with the Deck. Their listing includes:
- Wireless connection via Bluetooth 2.4
- Charging time in 3.5 hours
- Continuous operation time about 12 hours
- Back paddles (L4/R4) and 2 extra custom buttons (M1/M2) right on the bottom.
- A dedicated Quick Access button.
- Support for Bluetooth, XInput and DirectInput, but seems XInput only via Wired connection.
- Gyro in the "Steam mode". With the sticks having a touch sensor too.
- Rapid fire ability on face buttons (ABXY).
I'm extremely excited about this controller, though it is important to note that the website mentions there's no rumble/haptic feedback, there's (clearly) no touchpad, and there's no microphone input either.
While it's disappointing that there's no haptics nor a trackpad—I think the fact that the sticks are capacitive means that this will be an excellent PC gamepad or perfect for using your Steam Deck in docked mode.
I'm curious what you guys think of this new offering! Feed the engagement algorithm and let me know your thoughts down in the comments!
CS2 gets first community map pack
This week Valve released a handful of community-made maps for CS2—which is a first for the latest version of Counter-Strike. This just so happened to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original Counter-Strike mod: June 19th, 1999. It's wild to think that Counter-Strike is older than my youngest brother.
Anyway, the new update for CS2 brings a maps "Memento" and "Assembly" for Wingman, "Pool Day" for Arms Race, and "Thera" and "Mills" in Deathmatch, Casual, and Competitive Matchmaking.
There were several fixes for other maps, UI and gameplay updates, and some tweaks to the game's recommended settings.
GOG & Humble team up (affiliate link)
Well, this is interesting. There's a new Humble Bundle called "Strate-GOG". I could be wrong but I think this is the first time Humble and GOG have partnered up to offer a six strategy games. For $18 you get "Railgrade" (ProtonDB Platinum), "Expeditions: Rome" (Platinum), "Showgunners" (Platinum), "Field of Glory II: Medieval" (Platinum), "Hard West 2" (Gold), and "Spellforce 3 Reforced" (Gold).
All these games are redeemable on GOG. There are many excellent options for running your GOG games on Steam Deck including Heroic launcher and the upcoming Junk-Store integration, so I think this bundle makes a lot of sense for Deck gamers.
There's also this Royalty Free Sound Effect and Music Pack (affiliate link) for game developers. I just bought it and it's got a whole bunch of really useful sounds. There are over 5,500 individual sound effect files when I downloaded and extracted them all!
This week, the LCD Steam Deck model went on sale. Valve announced the the price cut for the LCD model as the LCD model is being phased out in favor of the OLED.
That means that, through July 11th, you can get the 64GB LCD for $297 and the 512 model for $382. This is an excellent deal for anyone who wants to get in on the Deck right now. These will only be available while supplies last, so if you're looking for a less expensive way to get your own Steam Deck (or you want to pick one up for your kid or something) this is a great way to do it.
Admittedly, a child with small hands would probably have issues reaching the thumbsticks—but I'd say this is probably for a 12 year old or older anyway.
What do you think? Will you be picking up an LCD model while it's on sale? This could be the very last sale they ever do for the Steam Deck LCD, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment below!
And while you're down there, you can like that smash button. It's the best way to tell the YouTube algorithm you wan to see more videos like this. You can also subscribe to my email newsletter to stay up to date with all the stuff I'm working on. The next email will include a sneak peek at the prototype for my next video game, so make sure you use the links below to sign up for that!
Now, let's talk about the biggest news this week. And instead of writing a script about it, I want to experience if first hand with you guys. So let's dive in!
-- Chapters --
00:00 Introduction
00:19 Steam Horipad
02:45 CS2 Community Map Pack
03:46 Humble's Strate-GOG Bundle
04:55 Steam Deck LCD on sale
06:15 Hands on with Steam's new Gameplay Recording feature
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